Jeff Sessions is wrong about Chicago's consent decree

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the Chicago Crime Commission at the Union League Club of Chicago on Oct. 19, 2018.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the Chicago Crime Commission at the Union League Club of Chicago on Oct. 19, 2018. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune)

Ronald S. Safer

Chicago is poised to sign a historic consent decree — a step toward restoring the broken trust between the people of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department — and that makes Jeff Sessions, the nation’s attorney general, unhappy.

Sessions’ comments on Friday before an audience of 40 business and law enforcement representatives at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission betrays a simplistic, politically motivated approach to complex issues. By choosing politics over substance, he once again denigrates the office of attorney general. Sessions fails to understand that the trust between the public and the police is essential not only to a free society but to reducing crime.

It is no coincidence that CPD is solving murders at record low numbers at the same time the relationship between the police and the people is at its nadir. When a community that witnesses crime feels victimized by the system, its residents are not apt to cooperate with the police. No witnesses, no charges.

Sessions fails to understand, or worse, ignores the fact that when police misconduct goes unaddressed because of a failed disciplinary system and a code of silence, trust and cooperation with the police decrease.

As a result, criminals remain on the street.

The city has taken major steps to address these issues. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has acknowledged the code of silence and has embraced changes to the system to break that code.

The consent decree is progress toward creating a mutual respect between the police and Chicago neighborhoods that need the binding agreement the most. There is much more that needs to be done, but this progress should be applauded, not ridiculed.

The attorney general’s remarks continue a divisive “us versus them” approach that is characteristic of the Trump administration but counterproductive to helping Chicago grapple with its problems.

What could the administration do if it cared about Chicago, as Sessions professes?

1.Institute a national gun registry so law enforcement officers and agents can track guns used in crimes.

Law enforcement is severely handicapped by the failure to organize and utilize this data. Surprised such a registry doesn’t exist? So was I when I was an assistant United States attorney charged with stemming gang violence.

Sessions is fond of saying that guns don’t kill people — people do. Fine. Let law enforcement track the guns back to those people and put them behind bars.

2. Provide opportunity to the areas that need it the most. When you ride through the highest crime areas of Chicago, the problem is patent: There are no grocery stores, no drugstores, no cleaners, no banks, no gas stations, no opportunity. Where does a teen who wants a part-time job after school go? The gangs are ready to fill that void.

Chicago and the state of Illinois simply do not have the resources they need. Tell the companies to which the Trump administration just gave a trillion dollar tax cut to invest some of that money where it is needed most.

3. Shut up. Sessions and President Donald Trump use Chicago as a campaign punchline. It doesn’t help. Even worse, the president recently invited rapper Kanye West to the White House, where West used that national stage to urge the release of Gangster Disciples founder Larry Hoover, whose gang of hoodlums was responsible for many times more murders than Al Capone’s Outfit. West erroneously stated that Hoover was jailed because he was doing good things in the community.

Ironically, those very same claims were made in the early 1990s, until Hoover was caught on tape arranging his gang’s drug trade, murders and the corruption of Chicago’s youth for his own financial gain.

As high as Chicago’s murder rate is now, it was almost double in the mid-1990s when Hoover’s gang controlled large swaths of the South and West sides of Chicago.

Allowing these claims to be made from the White House is a disgrace. Mr. Sessions, if you are unwilling to understand and address Chicago’s problems , at least have the decency to stay in Washington and leave us alone.

Ronald S. Safer, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Chicago, led the U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecution of the Gangster Disciples during the 1990s.